


Until The End

by Severina



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Community: prompt_in_a_box, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I should have been there to walk her down the aisle," he murmurs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until The End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's prompt-in-a-box community, for the prompt "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much." (Jackie O.) I'm not sure this story actually matches the prompt, but this is what came out.
> 
> * * *

Toby stares at the manila envelope, traces a finger along the lines of Harry's familiar scrawl. All he has to do is flip it over, slide the papers out. But his hands are shaking and that reminds him of sweet six martini lunches and two bottles of wine with dinner and crawling out of bed with a fuzzy tongue and craving another drink so badly it hurts, and it doesn't matter that it was all so long ago. He drops to the floor instead. Ten push-ups, then twenty. He switches to sit-ups when his arms start to give out, has gotten to fifty-three by the time Chris shifts against the wall.

"Just open the fuckin' thing already," Chris says.

Toby finishes the count to sixty before he glares up at Chris. The sweat dripping into his eyes makes his vision waver, Chris wobbling in and out of existence until Toby swipes at his face with a hand that's now steady. Then Chris comes into focus; dirty Henley and the waistband of his work pants rolled down and that frown line that he gets between his eyes whenever he doesn't immediately get his way.

Toby sighs. "Easy for you to say," he says. But he uses the edge of the cot to drag himself to his feet, pulls up the edge of his T-shirt to towel off before sitting back down on the thin mattress. 

He doesn't remember how long it's been since he's seen his kids. Two years, three? He knows it was before his "violent tendencies" got him transferred here, to a tiny cubicle with a cot and a sink and a shower and nothing to do but watch every bad judgment call he ever made replay on an endless loop in his brain. 

"Toby—"

"All right," he snaps. The once crisp manila folder is creased and worn from being manhandled in the mailroom, but he still upends the contents carefully onto the bed. Like they are something precious, something to be treasured.

He sets aside the letter and reaches for the photo. For a moment he will only let himself focus on Angus's proud face, but finally he lets his eyes drift to his daughter. His baby girl. He sighs shakily, swallows but won't let the tears come. Not this time. He doesn't want anything to mar his view of her beauty, the light in her eyes and the curls in her hair and her arm wound around the waist of the man who raised her.

"I should have been there to walk her down the aisle," he murmurs.

"You did right by her, Tobe," Chris says.

Toby snorts. "You think?"

If it wasn't for him, Holly would have had her mother by her side as she grew up, giving her advice on makeup and boys and all the things he didn’t understand. If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't have been snatched away from her home by a thug that he helped bring into her life. Wouldn't have been tortured. Wouldn't have seen her brother murdered in front of her, her uncle stabbed and rushed away on a gurney while she watched. She wouldn't have had to go into hiding. She wouldn't have attended three funerals before she was eight years old. 

She wouldn't have needed weekly therapy.

She wouldn't have spent two Saturdays a month of her adolescence sitting inside these grey walls and struggling to make small talk with a man she barely knew. 

"That was all Schillinger's fault, not yours," Chris says, "and you fuckin' know it." 

He should have put Holly and Harry first. Even after everything, he shouldn't have risked his parole. Not for anyone. Especially not for Chris.

He stares up at the man now, feels his lip curl. "It's your fault as much as mine."

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, Beech! How many times I gotta apologize?"

"As many times as I need to hear it! You ruined my life, Keller! You just wouldn't leave me alone—"

"I can't."

"You won't! You think I want you here, in my head, in my _life_? Taking up all that space that I should be using just to… to breathe, to live, to get everything sorted out again. I _need_ to get things sorted out again, don't you see that? Love isn't enough, I learned that back in Em City, I should have listened to—"

"You talkin' to yourself again, Beecher?"

Toby jerks toward the open cell door, blinks up at the hack. At first he thinks it's Murphy, then LoPresti. But Murphy transferred out years ago, back when they gave up as Em City as the failed experiment that it was, and it's gotta be at least six years since LoPresti got shanked. This is someone new – Mitchell or Michaels, something like that – and so green that he's practically trailing sprouts. Standing in the open doorway, no backup, hand not even near his baton. Toby can visualize himself springing from the bed, knocking the tray out of his hand, sending Mitchell-or-Michaels sprawling to the concrete. Wipe that condescending little sneer right off the bastard's face.

He could do it. The old bones have some life in them yet.

But all that would gain him is a beat-down and a transfer to the Psych ward. And endless sessions with the headshrinker. You realize that you're only harming yourself, Beecher. There's still a chance to turn this around and get back into Gen Pop, Beecher. On and on and on. 

He hears the crackling of the paper, realizes that he's been crushing the photo. He forces his hand to relax, smoothes out the wrinkles that crease Holly's beautiful antique dress, her bright smile. Takes a deep breath like Sister Pete used to advise when things in his head got a little crazy and everything started to rhyme.

He flicks his gaze to Chris, who just leans against the wall, crosses his arms and smirks at him.

"Yeah," he says wearily. "Talking to myself."


End file.
